The gaming industry is in the midst of a very interesting and turbulent time. With the advent of downloadable games on consoles, game makers are opening up new frontiers of technology and design. But technology shifts, and art is a strange constant in an otherwise ever-changing medium. No matter how far the industry has come or how much things change, art forever remains an integral part of gaming, and good art is still a rare and valuable commodity.

Pete Hayes, an artist working for Epic Games, knows this all too well. His work on Gears of War helped turn a brand new property into a gaming blockbuster. The first game in the series sold in huge numbers, for both the Xbox 360 and the PC, and Epic is poised to repeat the same success with Gears of War 2.

The work of Hayes and his colleagues is at the artistic vanguard of this entire console generation: the art style of Gears was largely the source of the "next-gen color scheme," a scheme exemplified in the gritty and dark design of Epic's original Xbox 360 killer app. But how has that often-imitated design changed going into the second game? And what of the art in the game industry in general? Ars sat down with Hayes to talk about his new game, his work in the industry, and what it takes to become a game artist.

The genesis of next-gen color

Ars Technica: Let me start with an easy question. Gears was the game that kicked off the so called "next-gen" color scheme, with browns and grays and that gritty look. Talk to me about that. Was that a conscious decision? Did you expect it to take off like it did? And how has that changed going into Gears of War 2?

Pete Hayes: Ah, yes. We get that a lot. As far as the comments regarding Gears and the color scheme, a lot of that is relevant for certain parts of the game, but we definitely thought there was diversity of the palette. As with everything in Gears 2, the theme is continuing with more of that. With the environments, we've continued to diversify the color palette, the types of environments, things along those lines. I definitely think it's a much more colorful game.

But it wasn't something that we set out as a conscious decision to counteract what some people thought about Gears 1: we made Gears 1 the way we wanted to make it, and with Gears 2 we continued to refine and polish and add to that formula. We've got these huge open vistas and beautiful sunsets and skies and different colors. There's tons of very vibrant fire and colors going on. There's definitely a much broader color range and we've tried to improve the visuals in order to make it even more beautiful.

Ars: And what of the notion that every Unreal game has a specific "Unreal" look? How do you feel about that?

PH: Frankly, I disagree [with that notion]. I don't think it's true. You look at Bioshock: there's a ton of UE3 games that have a distinct look. As far as some games looking "UT-ish" or "Gear-ish," there's definitely something within the industry and, well, everybody is inspired by everybody, artistically—especially if something is very successful. People look to that and try to capture that and bottle it and reproduce it. I think it's very flattering. But I don't think it doesn't have anything to do with UE3, it's just people's artistic styles of what they want to pursue. So that probably won't change, especially given the new enhancements for Gears 2.

Color will play a more prominent role in Gears of War 2.

Ars: Those visual enhancements have really started to take form in the multiplayer levels shown.

PH: Yea, for sure.

Ars: One level that caught my eye in multiplayer was "Avalanche." There's a blizzard going on, and there's an avalanche that comes through the level; it's very unlike what we saw with the Gears maps until "Hidden Fronts." Are all the multiplayer maps like that, with a thematic overtone like "the snowy level," "the fire level," and so forth?

PH: Yea. Each level has its own look and feel, its own vibe, its own uniqueness. That's one of the key things that we wanted to focus on was to give each one a distinctive feel, both gameplay-wise and also the color palette and the theme. Whether it's the time of day or the season, we wanted them each to feel very unique and stand alone as very individual levels.

Ars: The scale also caught my eye. Avalanche is a modestly-sized, symmetrical level, but the bigger levels and some of the single player stuff that we've seen is significantly more massive than anything in the first game. How do you work with that increase in scale, artistically? How do you go somewhat of a more directed and linear experience and open that up?

PH: Well, it starts first and foremost with the environments. Much, much larger scale environments. In Gears 1, you feel like you were part of this small squad with these little insurgent kind of skirmishes. In Gears 2, you feel like you're in a full-scale war, this huge battle. The biggest thing is that you've gotta open it up: you've got to have bigger environments, you've got to have more characters. We've also implemented more weapons, including the mortar we're showing and the Mulcher, which is the Gatling gun that you can use to mow down swarms of enemies. Artistically, it started with the environments, then how we filled the environments with more enemies, and then introducing new weapons (including the heavy weapon class) to make it possible to deal with all those enemies.

Ars: Working with the Unreal Engine all the time must make art production easier. You have that framework that lets you do what you do best. But does working with UE3 make you ever feel confined? Have you ever had to scale back on exercising your artistic freedom to make it work?

PH: There's always a constant struggle between the realities of shipping a game—independent of which platform you're developing for or what tool you're using. Obviously, as an artist, you're always wanting to put in another thousand more polys, or you're wanting that texture to be the next size bigger so your art is as perfect as it can possibly be. It's a constant balance between that fidelity and a game that runs on a disc and does all those things.